A recent study published in Scientific Reports suggests that political beliefs are increasingly linked to the number of children Americans choose to have. The findings indicate that while conservative individuals tend to maintain birth rates near historical averages, left-leaning individuals are having significantly fewer children. This demographic trend provides evidence that differing birth rates are a main driver of recent fertility declines in the United States.
The data revealed a pronounced change in how political beliefs relate to family size. For individuals born in the early 1900s, political orientation had almost no association with the number of children they had. However, beginning with the cohort born between 1943 and 1947, a massive divergence emerged.
“We expected these results, but not to such a dramatic extent,” Fieder told PsyPost. From the mid-century cohorts onward, individuals with right-wing political views maintained birth rates at or slightly above the replacement level. The replacement level, typically considered to be 2.1 children per woman, is the rate needed for a population to replace itself from one generation to the next without immigration.
In contrast, the birth rates of left-wing individuals dropped sharply, falling well below the replacement level in the more recent cohorts. The authors noticed this drop aligns with historical changes in family planning. “We found that the gap began with the introduction of modern contraception,” Fieder said.
I mean there are many reasons, but it’s still obvious from the data that a more accommodating society (both economically and otherwise) would have more children. It’d be easy to argue, for example, that “still looking for the right spouse,” is at least partially caused by delays in entering long-term relationships until it’s financially viable, and this also ties into “trouble conceiving,” because people are expected to spend the years they’d have the easiest time conceiving advancing their careers so they can provide a decent life to their future children. It’d also be absurd to suggest the necessity of two-income households hasn’t contributed to women prioritizing their careers over starting families*. What “affordability” really means here is the proportion of women who’d be able to have more children right now if not for money; it doesn’t count knock-on effects that boil down to unaffordability. Modern urbanized societies are deeply unkind to mothers in ways that need to be untangled before current birth rates can be presented as the results of freedom.
*To be clear, this is perfectly fine as long as it’s a free choice, but clearly in most cases it’s an attempt to optimize against social and economic conditions. Current birth rates aren’t any freer a choice than those of two centuries ago; both are responses to social conditions that make one choice much more optimal compared to others.